Between Chomskian rationalism and Popperian empiricism

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30 (4):329-47 (1979)
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Abstract

Noam Chomsky's rationalist account of the human mind has won many adherents and attracted many critics. What has been little noticed on either side of the debate is that Chomsky's rationalism is best viewed as a pair of quite distinct doctrines about the mental mechanisms responsible for language acquisition. One of these doctrines, the one I will call rigid rationalism, entails the other, which I call anti-empiricism, but the entailment is not mutual. Rigid rationalism is much the stronger of the two. What is more, the argument Chomsky offers for rigid rationalism is quite distinct from the argument for anti-empiricism. In the first section of this paper I will set out what I take to be the most favourable interpretation of each of these doctrines, along with the argument supporting it.

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Stephen Stich
Rutgers - New Brunswick

Citations of this work

Rules and representations.Noam Chomsky - 1980 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1):1-15.
Rules and causation.John R. Searle - 1980 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1):37-38.
Passing the buck to biology.Daniel C. Dennett - 1980 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1):19-19.
Evolutionary anatomy and language.Michael T. Ghiselin - 1980 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1):20-20.

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References found in this work

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.Noam Chomsky - 1965 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Language and Mind.Noam Chomsky - 1968 - Cambridge University Press.
The Architecture of Complexity.Herbert A. Simon - 1962 - Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106.
Natural Kinds.W. V. O. Quine - 2011 - In Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin (eds.), The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present. Princeton University Press. pp. 234-248.

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